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The room went pin-silent, save for Gray’s strumming. Then that died too.
Simon grabbed Nick’s phone, his face gleeful. “Did you hear that, Oblivionites? You got the scoop first. Nick Crandall is getting his dick pierced foryourpleasure!”
Nick couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. Hell, he might even have lost his resting pulse.
Dear God, what had he done?
“I will if you will,” Nick tossed back.
Simon brought the phone up close to his face. “Hmm. What do you think? Two pricks for the price of one?”
“Not the first time when it comes to you two,” Deacon said drily, lifting his daughter into the air far above his head.
The guy probably just wanted to show off his arms. What, was he trying out to be the next Avenger, for fuck’s sake? Add in a cute baby and Saint Deacon knew the fans would send in appreciative notes by the truckload.
Nick frowned. His Christmas spirit was disappearing fast. Time to get out of there and away from threats cast toward his person—and his defenseless penis.
At a loss for words, Nick snatched back his phone and booked out of the room while Simon howled with laughter.
The whole internet was probably laughing at him. And he was still filming. Great.
Since he was tired of being the center of attention, he followed his nose toward the kitchen. “Consider this a smell-gram,” he told the red dot on his phone. “Because Deacon’s goddess of a wife is making a feast worthy of a bunch of grungy rock stars—wait, scratch that. She’s making something delicious. Let’s see exactly what, shall we?”
He strolled into the kitchen and held the phone out toward Harper. “Say hello, Mrs. McCoy.”
Harper glanced up from whatever she was stirring on the stove and glared at his phone. “Crandall, you better not intend to get all up in my face right now. Cooking for a herd is serious business.”
Nick flipped the phone toward himself. “She appears to not want to say hello to all of you lovely people. But that can’t be so, right? So let’s try again. Say hello to the fans, Harper.”
Harper smiled brightly and lifted a dripping ladle in a semi-wave. “Hi y’all. Merry Christmas.”
“Damn, she’s got gravy. Look at all that.” He peered into the pot and was halfway to sticking a finger in to taste when she bopped him on the back of his hand with her giant spoon. “Ow. Okay then, guess I’ll just have to try that later.” He leaned over the open stove door at the glistening bird roasting in a pan of its own juices. “That smells fucking fabulous. Turducken?” he asked, mainly to goad Harper.
Harper would never allow such a hybrid in her kitchen, even if it happened to be borrowed. The kitchen, not the hybrid.
“You wish, Crandall. This is a twenty-pound young turkey.”
“Not to question your chef-tastic expertise, but I do believe Christmas is a holiday that requires ham.”
She stepped back from the oven and sniffed in his general direction. “Did you have a turkey at Thanksgiving?”
“Unless an undercooked, inedible one that nearly poisoned me counts, no.” So much for his experiments in the kitchen.
“Exactly. And neither did the rest of the heathens. So we’re doing up a damn turkey with all the fixings.” She jerked a shoulder and eyed her bird. It was truly magnificent, in a dead fowl on a plate sort of way. “Besides, big guy favors turkey over ham.”
Nick turned the phone back toward him. “Big guy is Deacon, in case you were worried she was stepping out on our bassist. By the way, ‘big guy’ doesn’t mean what you think it does, dirty birds.”
“Yes, it does,” Harper called, smiling sweetly as he swiveled his phone back her way.
“Well then, guess we’ll just leave that one alone, since this is a family show and shit.” Even he had to laugh as he pivoted toward the doorway to search out his next victim.
Lila was framed perfectly in his shot, as cool as an icicle in a fuzzy blue sweater and white pants.
And he nearly dropped his damn phone.
She’d pinned her hair up in some kind of twisty thing that left a few curls dangling to her shoulders and she wore little makeup. Not that she ever went heavy with the stuff, but now he could see freckles dusting her cheeks, and her unpainted mouth looked as soft and pink as a candy cane that had already been sucked on.
God, he wanted to lick her from her mouth to her toes, then start all over again.
